The Frenchman. Marcel Archinard

Marcel Archinard was a French violinist whom Munch encountered through the network of European musicians and artists that gathered in Germany and Scandinavia in the early twentieth century. Munch's circle during his extended German residence of the early 1900s included figures from Hamburg, Berlin, and Lübeck — patrons, doctors, musicians, and critics who recognized his genius before Norwegian opinion had fully caught up. Portrait commissions and informal studies of friends were a constant thread in Munch's practice alongside his large symbolic compositions, and his best informal portraits have a directness of psychological attention that differs from the charged symbolism of the Frieze of Life works. The National Museum in Oslo holds this alongside many other Munch portraits, preserving a record of the international human world he moved through during the years of his greatest creative intensity and personal instability.

Munch renders the young musician with relatively conventional portrait organisation but his characteristic colour intensity — warm flesh tones against a simplified background that carries its own chromatic life. The brushwork is direct and confident, building the face with decisive marks that convey character without laboured detail. The overall tonality is warmer and more inviting than his anxiety-laden works.